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One of the things I noticed during the campaign is the use of action words and verb tenses. Business communication is always focused on action words and trying to increase the urgency and importance of your speech by cutting out extraneous information. This is a change from my past as an English major. I did notice a major correlation between the verbs people chose and the message they sent.

People who wanted to put forth a platform of ideas tended to use strong phrases and say I will. As an example, one candidate started with As President, I will work… and then outlined the plan that he has in mind.

Candidates who want you to get to know them used if phrases. Generally, people who started with if elected tended to spend more time telling about themselves and how open to ideas they are, and less time developing plans.

Likewise, the first group of people tended not to have topic sentences in their platforms or speeches and instead went for the “grab” to pull you into their candidacy. The second group had more pleasantries and superlatives.

In the contested positions, everyone who was more in the first group won. Even when two platforms for the same election started with asking verbs, the one that went straight to ideas beat the one that went to experience first. This was, according to the grapevine, the hardest of the two to decide between because everyone really liked both.

Overall, I think we had a really great group of candidates and people trusted that they could all get the job done. Given this background, it seems like reminding people of your past experiences didn’t help as much as outlining what you planned to do. There was a certain mindset that all of the candidates had enough of a background to get things done, the difference would only come in what they did with their background.

I think this can be extrapolated to the job searching process. Too many resumes, cover letters and interviews focus on the details of what has been done before. I think employers would rather hear what you’re going to be able to do for them. The stories about past performance aren’t impressive on their own, but rather are an opportunity to show that you have the skill base needed and recognize that this is the right time to use it. There is an important difference between how you’ve done something similar before, and how you’ve done something similar before that means you can get results now.

First, I have a bit of advice for anyone who’s switching fields, especially if they are doing it by going back to school. If at all possible, get some experience in your new field while you are switching, whether its volunteer work, part time work or an internship. I talked to a number of companies at the National Black MBA conference this fall, and they fell into three categories. Some companies liked to take people from different backgrounds and teach them to become brand managers and marketers. These companies were excited to see switchers. Some were interested in switchers, but only if they could show the same skill base, such as numerical analysis, project management, experience in a matrix organization, and cross team leadership. Others said they mainly hired from other firms and wanted you to cut your teeth elsewhere. Everyone said to highlight anything that I had that could be considered relevant experience. I did that, and also took another step.
In addition to summer jobs, people also post 5-15 hour a week internship jobs on the Maryland job site. Surprisingly, not many people sign up. I got one where I’m doing marketing for an IT consulting firm, which is great because I have the IT past to understand what it is that the company does. It gives me a great chance to get marketing experience that I can talk about, and exposure to a whole different side of a company. It also gives me a nice stipend that I can spend to go out with friends for drinks or food that would otherwise stretch my budget.
I’ve started “pinging” everyone that I talked to back at the career fair and since then, with a focus on anyone who doesn’t come to Smith to recruit. In each letter, I mentioned talking to them earlier, the key points about the job and the skills needed that we discusses, and then said I’d taken the liberty of attaching a resume. I also noted that we’d discussed how basic job skills that I already had could carry over, and highlighted that I’d had exactly that experience in my marketing job, where I’ve learned about direct mail campaigns, ad-word optimization and email campaigns. The first company that I mailed sent back an invitation to fly down and visit them for a third round interview and tour of their facilities.

I’d been a little annoyed that so many of the people at the job fair basically told everyone to check back later, or only wanted very experience candidates. However, I think a lot of people may fail to check back later, and to make the connection to the earlier conversations, which may make all the difference in differentiating yourself from all the other candidates.